Karen Horney (1950, Neurosis and Human Growth) said that the neurotic pursues idealistic self; Alfred Adler (1964, The Neurotic Constitution) said that the neurotic pursues power to compensate for his felt sense of inferiority and powerlessness. Helen Schucman (1976, A course in miracles) insists that to heal neurosis the spiritual dimension must be explored. The three psychologists, in my experience, are correct.

The idealistic person is a person seeking power; he wants to change his self and make it become an ideal self, change other people and make them become ideal selves, change social institutions and make them ideal institutions and change nature itself (trees, animals and all things) and make them ideal; to make ideal is to make things be as he wants them to be. This compendium of desires equals pursuit of power.

It takes power to remake one's self, other people and the world to be what one wants them to become. The idealist is seeking total power to remake his self, people and the world in the image he desires. He is bent on recreating his self and all people and the world; the way he is created is not good enough for him, the way other people are created are not good enough for him; he must remake the self, other selves and world to suit his wishes; this is wish for total power, for power to be greater than God's power.

A person pursuing ideal self and hence pursuing total power does not recognize other people's right to tell him what to do; he cannot accept that other people are better than he is; he feels angry when another person dares to tell him what to do; he asks: who do you think that you are telling me what to do. If you keep him waiting on the line to be served he feels totally angry at you for you kept the all-powerful, almighty God waiting on the line without serving him immediately, without gratifying his wishes.

BECAUSE TO GIVE UP IDEALISM IS TO FEEL POWERLESS THE IDEALIST FINDS IT DIFFICULT TO GIVE IT UP

It is difficult to give up idealism and power quest for to do so is to feel ego powerless and depressed; when the ego seeking power accepts powerlessness it feels hopeless for it is no longer in charge of its life. He is no longer in charge of his life, other people's lives and the world; he resents that reality.

THE PURSUIT OF IDEALS AND POWER IS WHAT THE WORLD EXISTS FOR

The pursuit of ideals and power is existential; it is what the person, all people in degrees, came to the world to do.

All of us came to the world to recreate ourselves, recreate other people and recreate the world. In Spirit, God created us as part of him but we resented him for creating us and want to create ourselves, people and the world hence created the world of space, time and matter, our physical universe.

Because pursuit of separated ego idealism and power is existential to give it up one must replace it with something else: one cannot just accept powerlessness for that means that one dies.

The son of God in God has all power so you cannot persuade him to give up power and be powerless; what needs to happen is for him to replace his ego false power with God's real power.

Every person you see, men, women and children, even beggars on the street are pursuing their understanding of power. You should never make the mistake of thinking that there are human beings who do not seek power; all you need to do is help yourself and people replace their pursuit of false ego power with pursuit of real power, power based in God.

What one needs to do is replace ego idealism and false power with the power of God. One must accept that God created one, created other persons and the world and is in charge of one's life, and is in charge of other people's lives and is in charge of the world.

God is in charge in spirit not on earth. God did not create the physical universe so he is not in charge of it; however, God in the temporal universe, the Holy Spirit has the power to see the past, present and future hence can guide us in the world. He can guide us to doing what is good for us even in the world he did not make, our earth.

One must accept the Holy Spirit, the God in the temporal universe and ask him to guide one. One must give up the ego quest for ideals and power and replace it with the Holy Spirit directed quest for ideals and power (on earth this means acceptance of mixed capitalist-socialist economy, and social democracy).

The whole is in charge of the whole; the part, the ego is never in charge of the whole; the whole Spirit (Holy Spirit) is in charge of the whole world; reliance on its power is realistic; reliance on ego power is not realistic, for the part cannot help you successfully deal with the whole universe.

THE PURSUIT OF EGO IDEALISM AND POWER LEADS TO DELUSION DISORDER AND IF BELIEVED LEADS TO PSCHOSIS

The pursuit of ego idealism and power leads to paranoid personality disorder and or delusion disorder; if one actually feels that one has the imaginary power that the ego ideal wishes one becomes psychotic; ones psychosis can be either schizophrenia, paranoid type or manic- depression (Bipolar Affective Disorder).

THE WISH FOR EGO IDEAL EXCITES ONES BODY AND MAKES IT SEEM REAL FOR ONE HENCE IS A MEANS OF SEPARATION FROM ONES REAL SELF WHICH IS NOT BODY BUT SPIRIT

If you are an idealist and wish for ideal self that wish excites your body and makes you body conscious; it makes your body seem real to you and if your body is real to you then what body houses, separated self, ego, seem real to you.

The pursuit of ideals that seem what happens to one against ones wishes is a self-chosen means of making ones ego and body seem real to one, of making one forget that one is part of eternal unified spirit and not separated ego self.

If one is separated from ones real self, unified spirit self, one then have a conflicted self, a split off self from ones true unified self.

The real you is not the ideal you; the ideal you always has to do with yourself in body, body that you (1) invented and (2) made sick and then (3) use your mind to make that weak and sick body to seem ideally healthy.

The pursuit of the ideal self is an ego trick to make separation real. The pursuit of the idealized self is always an ego power play for now your ideal self is all powerful self that has replaced the humble self that God created you as.

The ideal self is always a power seeking self. How do I know that to be true? If other people do not acknowledge and respect my ideal self I feel angry at them for they have not acknowledged the powerful ego-god I invented to replace the humble self that God created me as.

The real you knows that it is one with all selves and therefore is humble and is not proud and does not feel angry at other people no matter what they do to it, for it knows that it is not the ego or ego ideal in body that can be pleased or not pleased.

If you identify with the ideal self you always have split self (split between your real unified self and your separated self) and feel inner tension for you are trying to become who you are not, the self you invented to replace the self that God created you as.

THE EGO IDEAL SELF IS ALWAYS PRONE TO ADDICTIONS FOR ADDICTIONS MAKE BODY AND EGO SEEM REAL

As a false self the ego ideal self always is addictive; it makes itself addicted to food, coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, sex and other addictive activities; it is easily addicted to anything that stimulates its body hence make its body seem real and if its body is real then the ego separated self is real.

Any activity that makes body feel pleasured or pained makes body real and if body is real then the ego that body houses is real and if the ego is real then our real self, the son of God is not real and is dead.

If the son of God, our real self is dead then his father is dead; and if God and his son are dead then you (the ego) are now the replacement god who created you and the world.

This is the game that we are all playing. It is the game that made the world come into being and maintains the world but it is only a game, for in truth only God and his son, in their eternal spiritual union, exists.

This game does not call on you to moralize about its badness or complain about it, as the ego would like you to do to make the ego seem really sinful hence retain it; what is called for, by the Holy Spirit, is for you to understand the game we are all playing in our efforts to make separation seem real and then choose to stop playing it, to let go of it and in doing so remember our true self, the Unified spirit self, an eternal, permanent and changeless self. In unified spirit self we feel perfect peace and joy.

ADDICTION IS DESIRE TO KILL ONES SELF AND KILL GOD

The addicted person actually is motivated to kill himself; he literally wants to die and wants to kill his self with his drug of choice. Addiction is part of the ego's effort to kill the son of God, and if God's son is killed then God, too, is killed. Addiction is an effort to destroy God and his son. If death is real then eternity is no longer real, God no longer exists.

In addiction you do something that will destroy your body but in the immediate term you appear to be deriving pleasurable physical sensations from it; it does not even have to be positive physical sensation for it could be painful sensation.

Addiction is an attempt to make one's body seem real to one, by giving it pleasurable stimulation or painful stimulation. If one's body is real then what body houses, ego separated self is real. Thus, addiction is a futile effort to make the ego separated-self seems real in one's awareness.

The alternative to addiction is to learn to be egoless; to be egoless means giving up the separated self and wish for it; this results in being calm; one stops seeking physical stimulation and become calm and peaceful and just be without trying to make one's ego seem like something real and important, it is not.

As long as one identifies with the ego separated-self one must stimulate that ego and its body to make it seem alive (sex stimulates body hence makes ego seem real; food, alcohol, drugs and sex are means of affirming the ego and making it seem real).

The ego is our false self; the ego does not exist; it is the false replacement self we made and with which we replace our real self, the Christ, the son of God, the unified spirit self.

The ego is the separated self-housed in body; we (the son of God) defend that substitute ego separated self. One needs to stop defending the ego and its body. When the ego is let go one stops being prone to addictions.

Post Script

If you have read Helen Schucman's A course in miracles you will find her thinking in my essay. Dr. Schucman was a spiritual psychologist; she transposed the clinical psychology she studied to a spiritual psychology. What she did is exactly what I do. The lady's book is absolutely true. Learn spiritual psychology and conjoin it with regular secular psychology if you want to become healed.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji is from Imo State, Nigeria. He obtained his PhD from UCLA. He taught at a couple of Universities and decided to go back to school and study psychology. Thereafter, he worked in the mental health field and was the Executive Director of two mental health agencies. He subsequently left the mental health environment with the goal of being less influenced by others perspectives, so as to be able to think for himself and synthesize Western, Asian and African perspectives on phenomena. Dr Osuji’s goal is to provide us with a unique perspective, one that is not strictly Western or African but a synthesis of both. Dr Osuji teaches, writes and consults on leadership, management, politics, psychology and religions. Dr Osuji is married and has three children; he lives at Anchorage, Alaska, USA.